Outlawed(77)

WANTED



HOLE IN THE WALL GANG



Held up the FARMERS’ AND MERCHANTS’ BANK OF FIDDLEBACK on MAY the THIRTIETH, 1895, stealing THIRTY THOUSAND in GOLD and ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND in SILVER COIN.



These VERY DANGEROUS CRIMINALS are known to harbor among them WITCHES and people of MIXED BREED, and to engage in UNNATURAL BEHAVIOR and DRESS. They are capable of all manner of DECEPTION and TRICKERY and should be approached with GREAT CARE.



A REWARD of FIVE HUNDRED GOLD EAGLES shall be paid for any information leading to the capture of these DEPRAVED PERSONS.



“Please,” the woman said again. “They were going to hang me for a witch in Sturgiss. I saw these and I thought maybe you could help me.”

Another woman came the next week, and two the week after that. By the end of August we had half a dozen people staying with us, most barren but some run out of their towns for lying with other women or otherwise corrupting moral character. All of them carried the poster in their hands or in their heads. The Kid sent Agnes Rose to Nótkon for enough flour, lard, and ammunition to feed and garrison an army for the winter. We did not have a town, but we had money, and we had land, and now, it seemed, a town might be coming to us.

One night I sat with the Kid at the firepit. Around us was chaos, everyone meeting one another, talking and arguing.

“Cassie was right,” the Kid said. “This is dangerous.”

“You don’t trust them?” I asked, casting my hand around at the new faces.

“It’s not that,” the Kid said. “Look around you: soon they’ll outnumber us. Keeping us together, keeping all of us safe—it’s going to be harder than I ever dreamed.”

But the Kid was smiling. Every time something had to be decided, some question of provisions or strategy, some feud between two factions of new arrivals, the Kid seemed to grow in stature, shepherding all parties toward a solution with deftness and confidence. The Kid was a born mayor.

“I made you a promise,” the Kid said then. “And I’ll honor it. But we need a doctor more than ever. Rosie over there, I hear she brought in lice.”

I laughed. The truth was, I had thought many times over the last few months of staying at Hole in the Wall. I had not felt so at home since I left Fairchild, and I was loath to give up the feeling for the uncertainty of Pagosa Springs.

“Give me a few nights to think about it,” I said. “It’ll take that long to wash everyone’s hair with turpentine anyway.”

The next night, Agnes Rose was combing through News’s hair while I searched the brown locks of a new recruit named Daisy. At first Agnes had been chatty with the new women, telling them how she’d liberated two hundred eagles from a lawyer near Spearfish and separated a young deputy in Cody from his billfold and his pride, but as the weeks wore on she’d grown quieter and quieter, and now she was nearly silent.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“I can’t stop thinking about the butcher,” she said.

“From Fiddleback?” I asked. “You said he’d be cheering if they hanged us.”

“And that he would,” said Agnes Rose. “Still, I thought either we’d die, or we’d come back and put all the gold back into the town. I never thought we’d just take all those people’s gold and keep it.”

“Aggie,” I said as gently as I could, “you’ve robbed people before.”

“Don’t insult me,” she said. “I’m not stupid, I know what I am.” Then her voice softened. “But there’s always something you tell yourself, before every job. And in Fiddleback I told myself, if we survive this, we’re coming back and repaying these men and women ten-thousand-fold, by showing them a new way to live. And now I know that we won’t do that—it just eats at me, that’s all.”

“I understand,” I said. “It eats at me too.”

“Ouch,” Daisy complained. “You’re hurting me.”

“Here,” Agnes said. “Let me. News is clear anyway.”

Daisy got up, scowling. News stood too, but paused, her hand shading her eyes.

“Looks like Cassie found a new recruit,” she said.

Cassie had not warmed to the new women, exactly, but she had begun drawing up plans for planting and ranching in the valley to feed a larger number for years to come.

“We have to be self-sufficient,” I’d heard her telling the Kid one night.

Now as she approached the firepit, my heart rose in my chest. Behind her in the saddle was the woman with the birthmark, whom I’d met at the patent medicine stall on Easter Sunday, all those months ago. I was dressed in dungarees and a man’s shirt; as I helped her down from the horse, I saw recognition in her eyes.

“Sweet Mother Mary,” she said when we were face to face.

“My name is Ada,” I said. “We have a lot to explain to you.”

She looked around the firepit at News, Agnes Rose, Daisy, a few more straggling in to get a look at the new arrival. She gave a little laugh of exhaustion and sorrow and relief.

“I suppose you do,” she said. “But you were right. I should have saved my liberties for the wagon ride to Holy Child.”

“Did the Mother Superior send you here?” I asked.